12V Battery Issues

[leosayer]

8 hours ago, bZ4X said:

Have u tried turning the remote climate on using MyToyota apication? This will feed 12V battery while running the A/C.

 

I watched this trick on YouTube. It worked for an EV model. 

please send us alink for the youtube video

[ChrisON]

10 hours ago, bZ4X said:

Have u tried turning the remote climate on using MyToyota apication? This will feed 12V battery while running the A/C.

 

I watched this trick on YouTube. It worked for an EV model. 

I'll give it a go if it happens again (and if l remember).

Chris

 

[Empty Sea]

On 10/27/2023 at 8:07 AM, ChrisON said:

Had my first experience of a drained auxilary battery yesterday. Car hadn't been used for about 4 days. I unlocked the door, tried to turn it on and the first error was 'Parking Brake Unavailable' after a few moments fiddling it went completely dead, no display, no error message, couldn't lock the doors. I wasn't at home so had to call Toyota Assist and they, in the guise of Egertons Recovery, turned up within thirty minutes. The very helpful chap connected up his battery booster pack and the car was up and running within a minute. He told me this is a very common problem on some EVs - mainly Hyundai and Polestar in his experience and getting to the auxilary on a Polestar was a real pain. He couldn't comment on the bz4x as it was the first one he'd been called out to.

All a bit frustrating - shouldn't happen over such a short period and why can't it get a boost from the traction battery pack if there is sufficient SoC? Why not get an alert in the app along the lines of 'Low SoC in auxilary battery'? I can feel a letter to Toyota coming on - for all the good it will do. Not something you should have to deal with on a car costing north of £50k. I haven't had a flat car battery since my Escort XR3i !

Any recommendations for a portable battery booster? Halfords do one that looks similar to the one the Egerton's chap used --> NOCO GB40 1000A

Chris

 

I was moving house into the country on Saturday - removal vans had departed, and I went to follow them but, at one of the most crucial of times, the 12V Battery was flat - probably opening and closing the boot too much. The Noco didn't work! Thankfully a kind neighbour just happened to be in and was able to jump start the car and I was able to get to the wilds of Sussex and move in.

The following lunchtime, despite having driven the car quite a way to the new address, the Battery was flat, and again the Noco wouldn't work! Eventually a very helpful AA guy arrived and jump-started the car with his very powerful Battery pack. The battery is not holding sufficient charge and needs to be replaced. Will my Toyota dealership bring it to me if I can't get the car to them?  I mentioned the 12v battery issue with EVs generally to him and his comment was that it was more common with Toyotas than other manufacturers.  I can now see why petrol engines rule in the countryside! I've now bought the beefier aforementioned NOCO GB40 1000A, and hope that will work!

He suggested that I either take it for a long drive, or just leave it turned on so that the 12V battery would charge from the drive batteries. I hadn't appreciated that would work.

[Roy124]

Your last paragraph holds a clue.  Use Ready mode.

You bought a larger Noco pack; what capacity was your old one?

25 minutes ago, Empty Sea said:

the 12v battery issue with EVs generally to him and his comment was that it was more common with Toyotas than other manufacturers

That needs qualifying.   How many Toyotas liable for 12v issues compared with other makes?  I am not saying he is wrong but it clearly relates to total numbers of cars.

[philip42h]

1 hour ago, Empty Sea said:

I've now bought the beefier aforementioned NOCO GB40 1000A, and hope that will work!

Have you charged it up yet?

The Noco is just a rechargeable Battery pack - it won't work unless you charge it up reasonably regularly - a couple of times a year should do, plus every time that you actually make use of it ... 😉 

[Empty Sea]

Previous Noco was the NOCO Boost Sport GB20 500A.

It was, of course, fully charged the second time I used it.

So it works well if the car is completely 'dead'. But if the power button is pressed and it the display then 'dies', with just the function buttons flickering red, I couldn't seem to get it to turn off. Perhaps I'm missing a point here?

[philip42h]

57 minutes ago, Empty Sea said:

Perhaps I'm missing a point here?

I suspect that we both are ...

The GB20 is more than enough to get the car - bZ4X or any Toyota hybrid - into Ready mode when the auxiliary Battery is 'mildly' discharged. The GB40 won't do the job any better - it will just do twice as many 'restarts' as its smaller brother between charges due to it's higher capacity.

If you had 'mildly' discharged the auxiliary Battery by " opening and closing the boot too much" then the GB20 should have got you going again and driving quite a way - say for an hour - should certainly have charged it up again. So there's something else 'wrong' ... maybe you managed to seriously discharge the Battery to the point that it needs replacing, maybe the battery was on it's last legs anyway, maybe there is something else wrong. Either way you probably need to take it in to the dealer to investigate and resolve.

[Derek.w]

You can charge up your Battery on a regular bases lets say once every 2 weeks for low milage users in winter then re charge your Noco booster pack every 4 month it not used.

 

 

[Derek.w]

If you used your Noco booster then when you home fully charge your booster pack & the cars 12 volt Battery using a mains charger.

[Empty Sea]

A quick update. I took my car to the local Toyota dealership to replace the 12V Battery. In the nearly 12 months since I bought the car it has failed to start the car 6 times, and the AA guy said it was not holding the charge. Despite the fact that the car is still less than 12 months old, the Battery was not covered by warranty because I have driven less than 5000 miles. The cost to replace the Battery was £325. They charged me £185 +VAT labour (!) and £85.83 +VAT for the battery. I wish I had gone to Ha*****s - A battery for the Bz4X there would have cost £91.99 (including a 5-year guarantee) + £20 to fit it!

[Derek.w]

Thats expensive do you know if a set fee was charged for connecting carrying out dianostic testing?.

I also come across disposable charge but a local scrap man will take it for free.

[Empty Sea]

I have no idea - I was pretty desperate to get the problem resolved. and was told that the repacement Battery would cost £325. It was not made clear that 2/3 of this would be labour, and there was no diagnostic work.

[bZ4xSupra]

Just had the car not start for me. Dash lit up like a Christmas tree and then it just slowly killed itself with certain beepings, lights and warnings until all went silent. 

AA jumped the car and followed me to the local Toyota as I have errors on the dash that have to be dealt with at the dealer.

Most annoyingly, it's reset the memory settings for the seats 😂.

I appreciate I don't drive the car enough at the moment but still frustrating.

[Matt Bumstead]

Just to add to the catalogue of reports of this problem, it has now also happened to me, just over 12 months since I took receipt of the car. I tried to start the car last night to reports of a parking break failure, and the headlights flashing on and off. I called Toyota Roadside Assistance and the AA technician reported that the 12V Battery had died and was not holding a charge. He jump started it for me, which got the car up and running, albeit with an error message about a driver monitoring failure, but he advised me to keep the car switched on for about an hour so that the main Battery could try and charge the Battery enough for me to drive it to the Toyota dealer. Sadly, my dealer is unable to investigate and replace the battery for another two weeks, so I’m investing in my own jump start device to get the car going if I need to drive between now and the dealer replacing the battery. The AA technician told me that this is a very common problem on most EVs, although this was the first time he’d been called out to a bZ4X. This is the first time I’ve had a battery problem on any of the cars I’ve owned.

[bZ4xSupra]

Curious how this is showing up on the forums for cars literally ticking over a year old. Well, a year since delivered. We'll ignore the months parked up in Derby. 

[bZ4X]

22 hours ago, bZ4xSupra said:

Curious how this is showing up on the forums for cars literally ticking over a year old. Well, a year since delivered. We'll ignore the months parked up in Derby. 

Yes that's the problem. Subaru is replacing 12V not Toyota. 

[Matt Bumstead]

On 11/22/2023 at 1:38 PM, Matt Bumstead said:

Just to add to the catalogue of reports of this problem, it has now also happened to me, just over 12 months since I took receipt of the car. I tried to start the car last night to reports of a parking break failure, and the headlights flashing on and off. I called Toyota Roadside Assistance and the AA technician reported that the 12V battery had died and was not holding a charge. He jump started it for me, which got the car up and running, albeit with an error message about a driver monitoring failure, but he advised me to keep the car switched on for about an hour so that the main battery could try and charge the battery enough for me to drive it to the Toyota dealer. Sadly, my dealer is unable to investigate and replace the battery for another two weeks, so I’m investing in my own jump start device to get the car going if I need to drive between now and the dealer replacing the battery. The AA technician told me that this is a very common problem on most EVs, although this was the first time he’d been called out to a bZ4X. This is the first time I’ve had a battery problem on any of the cars I’ve owned.

I had the car in with the Toyota dealer for two days. They initially reported the same observation, that the 12 V Battery was not holding a charge. They also advised that if it were to be replaced, then the warranty would not cover it because I hadn't driven enough miles in the car.

They put the 12 V Battery on an overnight charge so that they could run some tests the following morning, and this brought the Battery back to life. I collected the car late on the second day (it also received its first annual service), and it seems to have been behaving itself since.

The dealer did warn me that the battery had gone flat because:

1. I hadn't been driving the car enough,
2. The weather has been cold, and
3. I enabled all the automatic seat and steering wheel heaters, which will have drained the 12 V battery more than it could recharge.

The story's moral is that the heating elements that draw on the 12 V battery are best only used for long trips. It's a little annoying, given it's a marketed feature of the car, but there we are. It also seems to be a design flaw, in my opinion.

 

[wivenhoe]

My reply to the dealer would be - Toyota offer a PCP based on 6,000 miles per year so the car must be designed to do an average of only 500 miles per month operating the heating in the specification. 

[philip42h]

13 hours ago, Matt Bumstead said:

The dealer did warn me that the battery had gone flat because:

1. I hadn't been driving the car enough,
2. The weather has been cold, and
3. I enabled all the automatic seat and steering wheel heaters, which will have drained the 12 V battery more than it could recharge.

In reverse order:

3. simply doesn't ring true. While the car is running, the 12V supply is provided from the traction Battery via the DC-DC converter, and, by design, that must be capable of powering all the 12V electrical systems in the car - otherwise we'd wide-up grinding to a halt with a flat auxiliary Battery when driving on a longer journey! 😉

• Running more 12V systems will, obviously, impact range
• It might be advisable to switch-off the high drain systems before switching off the car so that they can't impose a drain while you are starting the car (and then switching on immediately the car is started) - but, honestly, that shouldn't be an issue either.

2. the cold weather will have a small impact on Battery capacity - but you don't have a cold ICE to try to turn over with a starter motor (nor do I)

1. If you leave the car parked up for longer enough (a number of weeks), the electronic systems within the car will flatten the 12V battery. Toyota have suggested that owners need to use their cars for around an hour per week to avoid this problem - it's a question of time rather than distance driven so, in this case, a good number of short journeys will due just fine.

So, the question then becomes, just how little do you use your car?

And if it is less than an hour per week, and assuming that you have off-road charging facilities at home, you could simply leave it 'on' for an hour on a Sunday afternoon, say, to keep the 12V battery adequately charged ...